The Van Allen belts aren't a problem just for space exploration. They can damage satellites, too, and we're putting up a lot of satellites these days.

Giant donut-shaped swaths of magnetically trapped, highly energetic charged particles surround Earth. James Van Allen, a physicist at the University of Iowa, discovered these radiation belts in ...

Mystery Belt. Back in 2013, NASA sent two Van Allen Probes into the Van Allen radiation belts in order to gather more information on the phenomena and on the Earth's magnetosphere.

Two giant swaths of radiation, known as the Van Allen Belts, surrounding Earth were discovered in 1958. In 2012, observations from the Van Allen Probes showed that a third belt can sometimes appear.

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However, in 2013, NASA’s Van Allen Probes reported an unexplained third Van Allen belt that had not previously been observed. This third Van Allen belt lasted only a few weeks before it vanished ...

On the left is the usual structure of the two rings forming the Van Allen belt, while on the right the temporary third "storage ring" is seen, nestling between the other two rings. (Courtesy: ...

The Van Allen Probes recently found a third belt of charged particles circling Earth, which was then destroyed by a solar shock wave. John Matson reports Back in 1958, at the dawn of the space age ...

When NASA scientists launched twin spacecraft to probe the Van Allen radiation belts last summer, they were expecting to study two rings of high-energy particles circling Earth. Instead they found ...

Explorer 1, the first U.S. satellite (launched in 1958, three months after the U.S.S.R. launched Sputnik), found a big surprise in space: the Van Allen belts, rings of radiation that to this day are ...